Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Wednesday, August 1, 2018, Sande Milton and Jeff Chen

10:58

The ayes have it! Wait, scratch that, reverse it. The i's haven't ... any place in this puzzle. Not a I. The puzzle is homophonically EYELESS - both clues and answers. Randy Quaid lost an eye and became RANDYQUAD (Campus area for amorous students?). Ha! An eyepopping Greek ruin becomes a GREEKRUN (Marathons, way back when?). and a SOCALBUTTERFLY gets an eyeful in Orange County and L.A. and becomes a social butterfly.

In addition to putting the eyes out of the puzzle so dramatically, there were other GOOD bits. ODDDUCK with the three D's in a row looks great. I also liked SOAK, RECUSAL, REDHOT, EQUUS, and ELOQUENT.

I am FOND of an EXCEL spreadsheet, although a little put out at it being tied with the epithet "common." :) I really don't know how anyone COPES without them. How else do they know what they URN?

And, color me surprised to learn that EMUS lay green eggs - and they are really green! I looked up some images on the World Wide Web - that's just how I am - driven to learn all I can on my own. I guess you could say I am self TAUT. I hope these groan-worthy remarks aren't taking ATOLL.

LYE


There were a lot of three letter answers in the grid, but most held their own - UGA excepted. Also, while I don't think this merits being scald out on the carpet, I thought PYRE didn't furnace an exact description of Joan of Arc's demise. Too soon?

~Frannie.

4 comments:

  1. 9:11 (FWOE)

    I chuckled at this theme, and at your ludicrous overuse of the PUN form. :)
    I'm not sure how many ALEs would, or should, be labelled with XXX, but then again, maybe a true SOAK would know better.
    I fwoed on NENA, having misremembered the spelling of her name. grrRURrr...

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  2. Totally agreed that ALE is dubious at best as XXX should be liquor not beer. That slowed me down for a while, but "rye" simply didn't fit there.

    I really wanted the Adam's apple location to be "eden", so much so that I even doubted the judge's voluntary removal for a while despite it not being clear HOW there could be any answer other than RECUSAL for the latter.

    I too had trouble with NENA, ended up running the alphabet and relying on the little completion ding ("finished with one ding"? "saved by the bell"?)

    18:47, typical for Wednesday.

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    Replies
    1. Eden for Adam's apple location would have been a good one!

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    2. The way to fool me is to *not* use misdirection, apparently.

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